FRIEDMAN'S LAST, VAIN GASP OF SAVING ISRAEL - AND THE U.S. - FROM ITS CATASTROPHIC WAR IN GAZA
- Gonzalo Santos
- Apr 9, 2024
- 3 min read
[On the anniversary of Emiliano Zapata's death in the Mexican Revolution]
He says he's read everything about why the two-state solution is now rendered impossible, and says they're 95% right. He wants to focus on the remaining 5% chance courageous U.S. and Israeli leadership can still pull off a lasting peace in Israel/Palestine.
It's a desperate, last gasp of trying to save a failed hegemonic project in the Middle East anchored in an apartheid state hell bent on oppressing what is an indissoluble portion of the vast majority of the Arab population of the region. If it was an unsustainable project in 1947, at the dawn of the binary world order we call the Cold War, it became unsustainable at its end in 1989-92, and along Bush Jr.'s catastrophic land wars in Asia, much more so in the 21st century.
The ring of absolute desperation by this organic intellectual of the American imperialist project is unmistakable. He's asking Israel to cease now and get out of Gaza - let others deal with the mess it made - and the US and assorted rich Arab allies will shower it, as well as the reconstituted Palestinian Authority, with regional peace accords and vast sovereign funds to make the two state solution become viable and enduring.
Mind you, the U.S. is broke - really broke, as measured by its $34 TRILLION national debt, and growing. And the moral and geopolitical leadership of the U.S. in the region is a shadow of what it once was. The reality is that its geopolitical and moral project, anchored in a bellicose Israel, is sinking fast in the blood-stained sands of Gaza.
The only way out - and, of course, utterly inconceivable to the likes of Tom Friedman and his patron Joe Biden - is to desist in trying to single-handedly with its allies channel (ram) the process without the full participation of its global and regional rivals. It would require a true concert of world powers to come together - China, Russia, the European Union, India, Brazil, Turkey, and many more regional powers - Iran, Irak, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, - and finally, both the PA and the Israeli governments. The institutional setting for this process already exist - with the same U.N. Security Council which partitioned Palestine in the first place, with a General Assembly, with an Arab League, etc.
Neither the liberal imperialists Friedman nor Biden - let alone the war hawks neoconservatives in the Republican Party - are willing to entertain this option, for obvious reasons: it would mean the U.S. is now prepared to give up its dreams of restoring its lost global hegemony and begin to accommodate other world powers and the international institutions to design the architecture of the new world order so desperately needed in the post-post-Cold War era of heightened geopolitical tensions and wars.
The American people shoulder the immense historic duty to rein in their duopoly in Washington, make it face reality, and force it to put a stop to all wars in which it is participating. And yes, that includes seeking a negotiated resolution of the war in Ukraine, which is but another proxy war between the U.S.and Russia.
Not yet prepared to step up to the plate? Wish to leave it up to Uncle Joe - or worse, the Orange Menace - to figure it out?
The blood of innocents spilled in Gaza and Ukraine is now reaching flood levels. Will it require it to reach oceanic levels for folks to act collectively to put a stop to the mad dreams of their imperial rulers?
Beware, that blood may well soon be of your own innocents, too!
"There is no path to peace, peace is the way." - Mahatma Gandhi.
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